Monster Media 1993 #2/Image.iso/wp/petpe401.zip/WHYBUYPE.TXT

Text File | 1993-08-07 | 10KB | 189 lines

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                   Why Buy pE - The "perfect" Editor

    OK,  you've  gotten  a  copy  of  pE, now, how are you going to
    evaluate it?  There are a skillion  editors  out  there.    Why
    should you try  one  more?    And why this one?  And why should
    you send Just Excellent Software the registration fee?

    Well,  pE  will  read,  and  translate  WordPerfect,  Word  for
    Windows, Word for DOS, Windows  Write,  and  AmiPro  files,  as
    well as  straight  ASCII  text.  No special effort required, it
    just does it.  If the lines are longer than you like,  pE  will
    wrap them on input.

    Not enough, huh?

    Well,  pE  will  scan  your directories looking for text (where
    _did_ I put that darned letter to First Fidelity  Bank  anyway)
    and  when  it finds 'that darned letter' it will load it into a
    window which can be sized, moved, colored, cascaded,  tiled  or
    stacked.   And then it will do the same for 39 more, all at the
    same time.

    pE will search through files in its  windows  incredibly  fast,
    almost instantaneously.    pEp, (pE professional) is capable of
    handling multi-megabyte files, and can use _all_ the memory  in
    your computer, not just the 'lower' 640K.

    That's just for starters, read on!

    Have  you  ever  wanted  to keep a reference file on the screen
    that maybe had data that was only a few  columns  wide?    With
    pE,  you  can  not  only have it occupy that part of the screen
    you want, but when you want to, you can go grab  whatever  part
    you want and stick it in the file you're working on.

    Have  you  ever  wanted  to  see  the function referenced in an
    include statement?  Alt_I goes and gets the  Include  file  and
    puts it  into  a new window to edit or view.  Put the cursor on
    the line with the arrow and press Alt  I.    F2  will  get  you
    back.   You  don't  have  to be a programmer to appreciate this
    feature.  You can see it being used right here!

    --> READ WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT PE IN "QUOTES.TXT"

    Then there's the file chooser.  Don't you just  love  having  a
    program ask you to "Enter Filename:"  and you've forgotten how
    to  spell  the  name  or  even worse, what directory it was in?
    With pE, Alt_O  (open),  Alt_E  (edit),  Alt_M  (merge),  Alt_V
    (view), all  present  the  file chooser.  With the file chooser
    you can navigate all over your disk with  a  few  key  strokes.
    Pressing the first letter of your filename moves the highlight
    bar  to  the  first file in the current directory starting with
    that letter.  Selecting the file becomes a matter  of  pressing
    Enter ─┘.    From  the  file chooser, you can rename or delete
    any file on your disk.  Pressing F2 while in the  file  chooser
    allows you to select a different path, or drive.

    While  we're  on  the  subject of graphics, IBM in its infinite
    wisdom, bequeathed upon the PC a character set that allows for
    continuous lines that form several different box  styles.    Do
    you really  want  to  write  a macro to draw a box?  If you do,
    you can, but don't need to!  Try this, instead.  Alt_B (mark a
    Block, rectangular), followed by cursor  right  several  times,
    followed  by  cursor  down  several  times,  followed by Alt_1.
    Surprised?  Now put the cursor on the left  edge  of  the  box.
    Press Alt_1.   Lookee  there!  Try the cursor on the top bar of
    the box, followed by an  Alt_2.    If  you've  followed  what's
    written  you  should  have  a  box  with two intersecting lines
    through it.

                             ┌─────╥─────┐
                             │     ║     │
                             │     ║     │
                             ├─────╫─────┤
                             │     ║     │
                             │     ║     │
                             └─────╨─────┘

    But wait  a  minute.   Suppose the box isn't where you want it.
    Mark it starting at the upper left corner with  Alt_B.    Press
    End  to  mark  all the way to the upper right corner, then down
    arrow to the bottom row of the box.  Press F7 (shift text) and
    then watch the box float around the screen as you cursor left,
    right, up, or down.  When you got it where you want  it,  press
    the grey  +  key on the numeric keypad.  Try that with whatever
    editor you're using!  With a mouse, you can  mark  by  clicking
    the right  button  and dragging.  Letting go of the button ends
    the mark.  Clicking the left  button  anywhere  in  the  marked
    region  and  dragging  moves  the  marked  area  around  on the
    screen.  This is an exclusive feature of pE's.  No  other  text
    editor has this capability - so far.

    So  now  you're saying well that's fine but I need something to
    write programs with.  That means you want regular expressions,
    find and replace  (forward  or  backward),  brace  (or  parend)
    matching and  the  ability to mark a spot and return to it.  Of
    course pE does all those things, and a hundred more.

    When you shell to DOS, pE's swaps all but about  2K  of  itself
    out to  EMS,  XMS, or a disk file.  This frees up memory to run
    compilers, other programs, or even another copy of  pE.    Type
    exit and  you're  back  where  you  started.  Of course you may
    want to see what you did during that DOS shell.  Press F11  (or
    choose  DOS window from the Window menu) and a window is opened
    with your last DOS screen.  The text can be edited,  saved,  or
    the window can be just sized and used to review its contents.

    pE  (as  of  release  4.0)  reads all the major word processing
    formats and converts them to straight ASCCI.   This  means  you
    can  read  files  produced  by anyone and give them back a file
    which they can read with any word processor.  pE does  this  by
    identifying  the  file format, no special action is required on
    your part.  pE will even wrap long  lines  to  whatever  you've
    set the  paragraph  format  to.  This, like all options, can be
    saved so that it becomes  the  default  behavior  for  pE.    A
    different  set  of  options  can  be  associated with different
    subdirectories so that pE behaves  differently  depending  upon
    where you call it from.

    So how about word processing.  When I'm writing documentation,
    I want  word  wrap  and formatting capabilities.  And boy would
    it be nice to have my program in one window and  the  doc  file
    in another!   That way, the documentation may even be accurate!
    And what I don't want is to have to learn 200  word  processing
    commands.   Well,  the  file  you're reading was typed with the
    line length set to 68.  That's it,  brother.    Automatic  word
    wrap  at  the  right  margin, and follow the left margin above.
    Intelligent, Huh?  Now if you want to get fancy ^F6  will  turn
    automatic  formatting on so as you delete or insert, paragraphs
    will be  formatted  according  to  the  style  you  set  up  in
    "Paragraph Format"   under Options in the pull down menus.  You
    can choose from Left justify, Center or  Right  justify.    You
    can  even  choose  to  have  the  first  line  of  a  paragraph
    indented, 'outdented' or not.  And the best part of  all  this,
    is  with  this one paragraph, you probably have learned as much
    as you need to, to format documents.   The  user's  guide  goes
    into much more depth, of course.

    Alt_P (print) invokes the print processor.  You can just print
    whatever  is  in  pE's  active  window  with an ENTER on "Begin
    Printing", or you can adjust  margins,  and  turn  headers  and
    footers  on,  or  off,  or even print to a file on disk, so you
    can preview how it will look  on  paper,  before  you  waste  a
    tree.   The  registered  version  of  pE  comes  with the print
    processor as an independent  program,  so  you  can  print  and
    format files without having to read them into pE.

    Speaking of Options,  and  pull  down  menus,  have  you  tried
    colors yet?   Its  lots  of  fun.    The  pull  down  menus are
    accessed by holding the Alt key plus the shift key down, or F10
    The  top  line  of your screen will light up with the menu bar.
    Clicking the right mouse button when the mouse is  pointing  at
    the  top  line  of  the  screen will also cause the menu bar to
    appear.  Pressing the  highlighted  letter  followed  by  Enter
    moves you  to  the menu of choice.  Note the item labeled Help.
    There are about 60 or 70 (lost count) of  help  screens.    You
    can get  to  the help menu with F1.  If you don't like borders,
    turn them off.  The mouse can still be used to scroll and  size
    and mark.

    Well if you're still with me at this point, thank you for your
    patience.  pE is 32,000 (more or less) lines of  'c'  code  and
    about 4000  lines  of  assembler.    There are 523 functions at
    last count.  Your  registration  will  enable  me  to  continue
    development  of  pE  and other products which are in the works.
    If pE can be made to do what you want it to do that it doesn't
    already do,  why  don't  you  drop  me  a  line.    I   welcome
    suggestions, whether  or  not you buy from me.  (I welcome them
    more if they're accompanied by a check, however).  Please note
    that the trial period is 30 days...

    John Salidis, Just Excellent Software, Inc.

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